Gale V. King spent 36 years at one company, and the room that knows that kind of career best is about to say so in public. The Executive Leadership Council will present King with its 2026 Alvaro L. Martins Heritage Award at the ELC Recognition Gala on Friday, October 30, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. The award arrives in the council’s 40th anniversary year, and King is not a guest of the institution. She chaired its board of directors from 2022 to 2024.
The Heritage Award is named for Alvaro L. Martins, one of the council’s founding members and its first president and chief executive. It goes to a person whose lifetime of leadership has advanced opportunity and shaped the path for executives coming behind. King began at Nationwide as a claims professional and rose to executive vice president and chief administrative officer, a post she held from 2012 until her retirement in July 2021, with responsibility for human resources, corporate real estate, corporate security, aviation, and diversity, equity and inclusion across a workforce of 33,000. She now sits on the boards of AutoZone and Unum Group.
The work that lasts
“Gale has spent her career doing the work that lasts: building strong organizations, developing leaders and creating opportunities for others to rise,” said Michael C. Hyter, the council’s president and chief executive. “During our 40th anniversary year, it is especially meaningful to recognize someone who has given so much of her leadership to the institution and to the people coming behind her.”
King’s own giving follows the same pattern. She established endowed scholarships at the University of Florida, where she earned degrees in journalism and public administration, and at Santa Fe College. In 2007 she set up a scholarship fund in the name of her late grandmother and mother. Her honors include the University of Florida Distinguished Alumna Award and the Black Enterprise Legacy Award.
Exelon takes the Corporate Award
The same evening, the council will give its 2026 Corporate Award to Exelon, the Fortune 200 utility company serving nearly 11 million customers through six regulated utilities, among them Pepco in Washington and BGE in Baltimore. The numbers behind the award are workforce numbers. Exelon has invested almost $114 million in workforce development since 2019, and more than 2,700 people have been hired through its job training programs in that span. Its free STEM Academies served 400 students in 2025 and have reached more than 1,700 young people to date. In 2025, Exelon and the Exelon Foundation gave more than $45 million to nonprofit organizations, and employees logged 168,674 volunteer hours.
“Leadership at Exelon starts with a responsibility to serve,” said Calvin Butler, the company’s president and chief executive. The gala itself is the anchor of Gala Week, October 28 to 31, which the council expects to draw more than 3,000 members, students, senior executives and business leaders to National Harbor. Kevin Frazier hosts the black tie evening, and Chaka Khan performs. The week’s working sessions run the length of a career: an Honors Symposium for ELC Scholars entering the workplace, a Mid Level Managers’ Symposium, and Corporate Board Navigator, which prepares members for board service. Full details are on the council’s announcement and in its release on the Exelon award.
Forty years after its founding in 1986, the council is honoring a woman who built people inside one company for three decades and a company being measured on how many people it has trained and hired. The definition of leadership on offer in National Harbor is plain: who got ready, and who got in, because you were there.
The Social Register’s event directory tracks the season’s galas, benefits, and society evenings. Plan your next evening there.
